Saturday, December 14, 2013

2013 Christmas Card


If you're like me and can't afford to spend $75 for 35 cards at Tinyprints, this is how you create something similar for half the price and almost twice the cards.

Resources:
~PicMonkey - free picture editor
~Google Drive - free with Google or Gmail account
~Costco - yearly membership fee

1.  Upload a picture to PicMonkey and play around with the tools until you get the desired effect.  I wanted something a little vintage, a little weathered.  You then save the newly altered photo to a folder on your computer.  Easy enough.

2.  Open up your Google Drive and create a "Presentation."  This allows you to easily paste a photo as a background and add text on top of the photo.  Google has hundreds of font options to choose from, so I felt I had a more personalized experience, given that I could manipulate the size, style, and color of text in any number of ways, which you cannot do when you choose a card already designed.

3. Save this one slide presentation as a .pdf in a file on your computer.

4.  Go to the Costco Photo website and choose the Holiday Card option which allows you to upload your own photo.  I got 50 cards for $35 with rounded corners for free (this is an add-on on other websites) and our return address printed on the envelope - for free.  (Also an add-on on other websites.)

And this is how you create your own Christmas card for half the price.